Musings: Let us talk about the weather(ing) 2

Musings: Let us talk about the weather(ing)

Welcome to this issue of the blog. It's been a fair while now since I posted anything here but I hope (yet again) that this will change in the future!

The topic of today deals with the rust effect I've used most recently on Necromunda barricades and this will serve as a short guide on how to achieve the basic effect. Photos of these have previously appeared on my Instagram (projectnevindar)

Basic Rust* effect

Materials used:
* Mixed Weathering powder made from dry pastels (Dark/light/mid tone-earth and black)
* Rust coloured Weathering powder

* AMMO of Mig Oilbrusher: Starship Filth

* Citadel Typhus Corrosion (Or equivalent. I use a self mixed one)

* AK Interactive: Exhaust Wash

* AK Interactive: Decay Deposits for Abandoned Vehicles
* AK Interactive: Light Rust Deposits (Optional)

Starting off with one of the barricades with a Vallejo Gunship Green basecoat over a silver primer. The green is then covered by AK Decay.

 Second, use the oil brusher to start off the weathering process

Add to the oil paint with textured paint (like Typhus corrosion). This is to help build some texture to the rust.

Using a toothpick or paperclip, use capillary action to apply the AK Engine Exhaust to the inner edges of the panel.

Let everything rest for a bit (don't let it dry out completely) then use a cotton swab/q-tip to blend the first layers and cover the panels with "grime".

Optional: AK Light Rust Effects could be applied at this point using capillary action or being directly applied with with brush.

Apply the first layer of weatering powder (the mix).

Apply the rust coloured powder. Make sure to work both of the powders in to the previous layers of enamels and oils.

Finish it all off with adding some choice spots of rust powder and use a cotton swab/q-tip to "clean up" the surfaces, even further working the powder in and making the base colour and some silver show through.

That's all for this time.

/Nevindar

*Well... Rust-ish

Skunkwork Project: Autokrator Demolisher Tank (Ordo Reductor Artillery Tank)

Welcome to (yet another) new segment for the blog. Joining such illustrous segments like Musings, Gallery and Tablebuild-posts is Skunkworks Project. This new set of posts will be chronicling slightly larger conversion projects / builds in more detail. Hope you, dear potential reader, might find this interesting and/or inspiring! 

This build will convert a standard Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum Chimera into a Demolisher-turret armed Demolisher tank for my Autokrator-based Ordo Reductor army. And to give credit for inspiration for the rear-placed turret on the chimera chassis, look no further than here SandWyrms Converting Chimeras w. backset turret

Starting off, I assembled the tank in the four main parts as seen below in the first photo. 

I had decided for a set back turret look for this build, so a bit of hobby sawing was in order (descriptive wording there). These cuts were made on the top plate of the Chimera as follows:
The first cut (use a razor saw) was in front of the second pair of telescopes around the hatch, bisecting the gun mount. This cut is to make the rear top plate/rear door part of the build the correct size.
The second cut was made across the plate at the front end of the forwardmost gun port. Advice: be as careful when cutting as possible, mainly to maintain a straight cut which will help in the next part of the build... Oh and razor saw + fingers can actually hurt!

Dryfitting time. The recently cut front part of the top hull is placed to see if it sits as far back as planned. Some plasticard is added to act as support for the front half to assist in fitting it to the rear part of the upper hull. This is due to the inner supports on the track units not matching with the top part.

To give the hull a straight line facing to the front, a piece of the upper hull needed removing. Sadly I forgot to be diligent and take enough photos for the measurement, but the link at the start of this blogpost has more info on that. The piece was gently cut away and the front was sanded. It was then affixed to the tank proper, and lined up with the rear upper hull.

After sanding all the rivets down and making sure it all sits flat, a new front was added to the upper hull, and a piece of plasticard added as a top plate at the front. A liberal amount of greenstuff was then added and sanded. The hole in the top is to mark where the hatch will go later on)
Textured plasticard was then added to the fron of the tank, as well as some more green stuff..

Further work on the front. More textured plasticard added, the hole for the hatch cut out and a fair bit of sanding done. The top piece of plasticard at the front is yet to be sorted.

Side view. The gun ports are filled in with a mix of spackle and glue then sanded and covered with greenstuff. A bit of detailing added to the rear, and the rivets and imperial symbols removed on the side of the tank.
After the sides were sanded properly, a piece of textured plasticard was glued on and cut to size.

No tank is complete without track guards! nor without a bolter, for those...boltery moments. The bolter is a mix of pieces from the Chimera turret and a hatch lid. The front plasticard was smoothed down at this point, and some etched brass left-overs added to the track guards to add some details.
Second photo shows the tank when a lot of cleanup and sanding had been done, and the demolisher turret was dryfitted.

With the tank cleaned from all the dust, some more detailing was added at the back end and then a coat of primer. The "white glossy bits" is only light reflecting on the black.

Hope this post served as an inspiration to build your own tanks. I will post a gallery once all my tanks are painted up!

//Nevindar

Musings: Easy paintjob on a shipping container (Part 1)

Oh, one of these again. Well, if you get requests to go through how you "did a thing", why not oblige! This time it is the paintjob on my Warsenal Small Shipping Containers that I will go through in this Musings post. The article will be in two parts, the first one on the paintjob itself and the second one (once I can get hold of the battlemat I want for my table..) on weathering them to blend in with the mat.

The theme of these containers are that they are sent from the Forgeworld of Ryza to resupply the Avernii Clan of the Iron Hands Legion. Plasma Weapons? Maybe!

Materials:

Warsenal Small Shipping Containers (Designed for Infinity, repurposed for 30k)

The main painting tutorial will be explained using the doors of the container. However, the top, base and side struts recieved the same paint treatment.

Paints:

Black primer

Greatcoat Grey (P3)

Stonewall Grey (Vallejo Game Color)

Pale Greyblue (Vallejo Model Color)

Astronomican Grey (Citadel OOP)

Hot Orange (Vallejo Game Color)

Miscellaneous:

Gloss Varnish (Vallejo)

Matte Varninsh (Store brand)

Assortment of Transfers

Decal Medium + Fix (Vallejo)

Paintjob:

Step one: Black primer was sprayed on after preparing the surface. My goal here was not for an even coat, as long as it gave enough "grip" for the next stage of the process. The colour gradiation shown here serves to enhance the worn surface look of the finished model.

Step two: A heavy but mottled drybrush of Greatcoat Grey was applied. The drybrush ranged from nigh on solid coat to a light, feathery drybrush in places as seen above. The primer/basecoat should show through on about 45% of the door.

Step three: A heavy drybrush of a 50/50 mix of Stonewall Grey and Pale GreyBlue was applied in random patterns to yet again enhance the shabby look yet further.

Step four: (Remember to take a photo of the doors before assembling the entire shipping container) The markings on the container were made by painting slightly thinned Hot Orange in the pattern shown above. Since the whole point of the paint job is to give the illusion of a worn container, only some care was taken to clean up the orange mess on the bluegrey when slight mistakes were made. 

Step five: The entire container was coated with Gloss Varnish and set to dry. When the Varnish had dried a liberal amount of transfers were applied and the container was yet again set to dry. (As seen above I did work on three at a time).

Step six: (As seen on the two bottom photos above) After matte warnish had been applied and set to cure, a drybrush of Astronomican Grey was applied to make the containers look yet more worn and to reduce the slight shine from the varnish. This drybrush also served to make the orange paint look worn and not like it was freshly painted on the container. You can see the difference between the undrybrushed container on the top down to the one with the final drybrush on the bottom.

The final version of the containers seen above! Well, the paint job at least. The weathering will be done, as mentioned above, whenever I manage to get the battle mat I want. 

I hope this has served as some kind of inspiration to you all. Get painting and do your own weathering to match your boards! Painted terrain can make all the difference to immersion!

//Nevindar

Mechanicum 2: The Thallaxii-ng

Time to post up some photos of my Thallaxii units painted so far. Quite useful in game so far..well, after they got painted that is... Will have to add to these units later on I think, but for now on to some photos!

Unit 1:

Photon-thruster upgrade.

Unit 2:

Heavy chainweapon upgrades!

Oh, don't worry, the rims on the bases have been cleaned up since the photos were taken..

Since I have hade a question or two about how the swords were made, I will do a quick write-up with the few photos I took while working on them.

Started off with procuring a few chainswords from the GW Chaos Raptor/Warp Talon kit with a plan to apply them to the lightning guns the Thallax carry.

Enter a tad chronological gap. We jump ahead to where the swords have been separated from the hilts and the front of the lightning guns have been flattened off, leaving a surface to attach them like bayonettes. On the photo below they are dryfitted with blu-tac.

Two holes were drilled at either end, as shown where the guitarr string attaches to the gun. This also gives a clue to the metal bit used for the cable. Bent to shape and glued in place. 

Gun was later straightened.

The end of the gun was planed off to provide a place for the lightning gun bayonette to attatch.

And here we go. All three of them given the same treatment. 

Epoxy putty, primer and paint do cover quite a lot of sins ;)




//Nevindar

A Challenging January (Gallery post)

Welcome to the latest installment of Project Nevindar, the blog experienve surpreme! (Wait did I really just write that?). A more astute reader might already have noticed that this blog has actually gotten itself a proper logo just before closing in on its third birthday. Enough prattling, let's go on with what's new.

This month I took part in yet another challenge on Bolter and Chainsword. The March of the Legion. This took me back to my first Heresy-era project and I did quite get reinvigorated for Iron Hands!

This is Mantus, Iron Father assigned to the 523 Explorator Fleet aboard the cruiser Temeraire, the only cruiser from this fleet to make it to Istvaan V before the Dropsite Massacre. ...We are the ghosts of Istvaan V...

And now to some minis for the "regular" casual challenge.

Cacus, Librarian, IX Legion Astartes: The Blood Angels. 

Ascleipeos, Primus Medicae of the IX Legion Astartes: The Blood Angels

Primaris-Lightning Strike Fighter Designated VIII stationed on the Carrier-frigate Lachesis

This is more or less it for this time. Only painting grind, no special or extra fun projects!

Oh, there might be more frequent updates with my next project (no promises...) since... It is a bit larger than my more recent 1-2 minis a month ones. 

Cerastus-Knight Atrapos

//Nevindar

A grave conflict of interest in the frosty wastes of the north

Well, time for a side-project. Just some terrain. Just not Age of Darkness/30k or Warmachine terrain...

...Frostgrave!

Here's a teaser of what's on my workbench tonight!

A well that might contain dreams or nightmares... And a statue of wizards from long ago.

Stay tuned for more or less regularly scheduled broadcasts.

//Nevindar

B&C Boxing Day 24-hour painting challenge 2015

So, I took part in the new Boxing Day "Paint anything for your subforum of choice challenge" on Bolter and Chainsword this past day. The brief: Build, Base, and Paint a miniature (or more) in 24 hours. Never one to back down from a challenge (hence my record of failed ones behind me...), I decided to participate.

Despite having an ongoing Mechanicum project and the Iron Hands army going I deciced upon my old Legion of choice: The Blood Angels. Not willing to just rest on my laurels I decided to try out painting this character mainly with Gilding Wax (Rub'n'buff) and washes. Well, wax, washes and some miscellaneous metallic and regular paints.

Mini of choice? The new Blood Angel Chaplain from Games Workshop.

Not being satisfied with him looking like my vision of the (at this point yet unnamed) Praetor of the IX Legion, I decided that he needed some additions to his wargear. A Mk. IV helmet, , a sword and a plasma pistol.. And his 40k-ish Crozius was replaced with an axe. 

Pose mock-up. Sword or plasma pistol to be interchangeable (or other magnetized 1h weapon)

After this a bit of greenstuff work was done (no pictures of this) to remove the Death Company X markings on the knee and right shoulderpad. A bit of work was also done to sort out the axe head that replaced the Crozius mace top.

After priming was done, pewter gilding wax was drybrushed to half of the miniature and the wings of the backpacks. I did really fall in love with this doing my Iron Hands, and there is a liberal use of it on my Mechanicum as well..

Pewter drybrush

The red half below is the work-in-progress redification of the metal armour. Drying Blood Wash from Secret Weapons Miniatures was used for this. The gold and copper colour of the other half of the miniature are Rhulic Gold (Formula P3) and Screaming Bell (Citadel). At this point it really did just look like a mess of metallics.. (I could have used my gold coloured wax for the gold but.. let's blame time constraints shall we?)

The wings got a wash of Secret Weapon Blue Black in the recesses, followed by Secret Weapon Sapphire on the "feathers" themselves, leaving the pewter buffed wax to shine through.

Must say this was a fun project. The time constraints worked in benefit of the project (only painting one miniature for a short holiday challenge did not leech off too much time from writing essays!). 

Behold! Alastor, Lord of the Reborn, Master of the Battlebarge Seraphoi!

Weapon swaps, side-by-side.

Plasma pistol / Power Sword

So, let's have a foursome of pictures of the completed miniature, shall we? Seeing as we had a front-shot or two above, let's go for a spin.

You spin me...

...right round baby...

...right round like a...

...record, baby...

Must say that I could almost see me doing more of this paintscheme...

//Nevindar

ps. Photos taken with my LG G4, not bad if I may say so myself ds.